John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)

The Minister of State referred to planning. I have been informed by NGOs that they cannot make plans. They are making people redundant in the programme countries and cannot plan ahead in respect of their programmes. The ambassadors who have come before the sub-committee indicate that they are breaking the commitments they made in these countries.

The other Minister of State present, Deputy Roche, referred earlier to attracting reputational damage by making cuts too severe. The question that arises revolves around the point at which we will incur massive reputational damage in the programme countries by breaking our commitments in respect of aid. I accept that the country is facing into extremely uncertain economic times. However, our ambassadors, their staff and the NGOs that we fund require a degree of certainty so that they might continue the life-and-death work they are doing. There will come a point when the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Power, will be obliged to make a case to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Cabinet to the effect that the damage we will do by making further cuts will in turn lead to our incurring major reputational damage in the programme countries.

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